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Do hackers eat turkey? And other Thanksgiving Internet trends

Thanksgiving is a tradition celebrated by millions of Americans across six time zones and 50 states, usually involving travel and bringing families together. This year, it was celebrated yesterday, on November 23, 2023. With the Internet so deeply enmeshed into our daily lives, anything that changes how so many people behave is going to also have an impact on online traffic. But how big an impact, exactly?

At a high level: a 10% daily decrease in Internet traffic in the US (compared to the previous week). That happens to be the exact same percentage decrease we observed in 2022. So, Thanksgiving in the US, at least in the realm of Internet traffic, seems consistent with last year.

Let’s dig into more details about how people deal with cooking (or online ordering!) and whether family gatherings are less online, according to our Cloudflare Radar data. We’ll also touch on whether hackers stop for turkey, too.

The Thanksgiving hour: around 15:00 (local time)

While we can see a 10% overall daily drop in US traffic due to Thanksgiving, the drop is even more noticeable when examining traffic on an hour-by-hour basis. Internet activity began to decrease significantly after 12:00 EST, persisting Continue reading

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Video: Language Models in AI/ML Landscape

In September 2023, Javier Antich extended the AI/ML in Networking webinar with a new section describing large language models (LLMs), starting with how do the LLMs fit into the AI/ML landscape?

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Video: Language Models in AI/ML Landscape

In September 2023, Javier Antich extended the AI/ML in Networking webinar with a new section describing large language models (LLMs), starting with how do the LLMs fit into the AI/ML landscape?

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Candy Alexander Explains Why Bandwidth and Security are Both in High Demand

Learn why today’s changes in the way businesses operate require the use of new, secure, high-bandwidth connectivity options.

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RustRadio improved API 0.4

Since last time, I’ve improved the API a bit. That last post was about API version 0.3. Now it’s on 0.4, and I think it’s getting pretty decent.

0.3 could never have worked very well. The API was VecDeque-based, which means it could not provide a linear view (a slice) of all the data in the buffer.

The 0.4 API is simpler. You get a typed slice, and you read or write to, it as appropriate. Because all streams are currently single writer, single reader, the code is simple, and requires minimal amount of locking.

It’s simpler, but I switched to using memory mapped circular buffers, with a slice as the stream interface. This means that the buffer is allocated only once, yet both reader and writer can use all space available to them, linearly, without having to worry about wrapping around.

The code is still at https://github.com/ThomasHabets/rustradio. I registered the github org rustyradio, too. rustradio was taken. I sent a message to the owner, since it seems to not have any real content, but have not heard back.

Unsafe code

To make this multiuser stream I did have to write some Continue reading

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LFNE GNS3 Appliances

This post will be a very short one, more like a note :) Based on the LFNE Docker images (explained here https://ipnet.xyz/2023/11/lfne-linux-for-network-engineers) I’ve created the GNS3 Appliances for easy import into GNS3. The GNS3 Appliances can be downloaded here https://github.com/yotis1982/lfne and imported into GNS3. Have fun!

<p>The post LFNE GNS3 Appliances first appeared on IPNET.</p>

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Network Courses and Certifications to Consider for 2024

There are many network courses that can address your present job's priorities and help you gain the needed skills to keep pace with industry changes and new technologies.

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Workers AI Update: Stable Diffusion, Code Llama + Workers AI in 100 cities

Thanksgiving might be a US holiday (and one of our favorites — we have many things to be thankful for!). Many people get excited about the food or deals, but for me as a developer, it’s also always been a nice quiet holiday to hack around and play with new tech. So in that spirit, we're thrilled to announce that Stable Diffusion and Code Llama are now available as part of Workers AI, running in over 100 cities across Cloudflare’s global network.

As many AI fans are aware, Stable Diffusion is the groundbreaking image-generation model that can conjure images based on text input. Code Llama is a powerful language model optimized for generating programming code.

For more of the fun details, read on, or head over to the developer docs to get started!

Generating images with Stable Diffusion

Stability AI launched Stable Diffusion XL 1.0 (SDXL) this past summer. You can read more about it here, but we’ll briefly mention some really cool aspects.

First off, “Distinct images can be prompted without having any particular ‘feel’ imparted by the model, ensuring absolute freedom of Continue reading

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BGP Labs: AS-Path Prepending

In the previous lab, you learned how to use BGP Multi-Exit Discriminator (MED) to influence incoming traffic flow. Unfortunately, MED works only with parallel links to the same network. In a typical Redundant Internet Connectivity scenario, you want to have links to two ISPs, so you need a bigger hammer: AS Path Prepending.

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BGP Labs: AS-Path Prepending

In the previous lab, you learned how to use BGP Multi-Exit Discriminator (MED) to influence incoming traffic flow. Unfortunately, MED works only with parallel links to the same network. In a typical Redundant Internet Connectivity scenario, you want to have links to two ISPs, so you need a bigger hammer: AS Path Prepending.

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LFNE – Linux For Network Engineers

Formerly known as PFNE – Python For Network Engineer, the images developed to be more than just for Python learning. My choice was to call the new one more generic and pick the Linux For Network Engineers (LFNE) Linux images build with all tools need by network engineers to perform various tasks ranging from simple […]

<p>The post LFNE – Linux For Network Engineers first appeared on IPNET.</p>

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A Bright Forecast for Single-Vendor SASE Solutions. What’s Fueling Their Emergence?

The continued rise of single-vendor SASE offerings promises benefits to businesses. What are the pros and cons of the security architecture option?

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Nvidia Proves The Enormous Potential For Generative AI

The exorbitant cost of GPU-accelerated systems for training and inference and latest to rush to find gold in mountains of corporate data are combining to exert tectonic forces on the datacenter landscape and push up a new Himalaya range – with Nvidia as its steepest and highest peak. …

The post Nvidia Proves The Enormous Potential For Generative AI first appeared on The Next Platform.

Nvidia Proves The Enormous Potential For Generative AI was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

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Cisco Intent-Based Networking: Part II – Cisco ISE and Catalyst Center Migration

Cisco Identity Service Engine (ISE) and Catalyst Center Integration

Before you can add Cisco ISE to Catalyst Center’s global network settings as an Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting server (AAA) for clients and manage the Group-Based access policy implemented in Cisco ISE, you must integrate them. 

This post starts by explaining how to activate the pxGrid service on ISE, which it uses for pushing policy changes to Catalyst Center (steps 1a-f). Next, it illustrates the procedure to enable  External RESTful API (ERS) read/write on Cisco ISE to allow external clients to Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) processes on ISE. Catalyst Center uses ERS for pushing configuration to ISE. After starting the pxGrid service and enabling ERS, this post discusses how to initiate the connection between ISE and Catalyst Center (steps 2a-h and 3a-b). The last part depicts the Group-Based Access Control migration processes (4a-b).

Step-1: Start pxGrid Service and Enabling ERS on ISE

Open the Administrator tab on the main view of Cisco ISE. Then, under the System tab, select the Deployment option. The Deployment Nodes section displays the Cisco ISE Node along with its personas. In Figure 1-3, a standalone ISE Node is comprised of three personas: Policy Continue reading

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D2C221: KubeConversations Part 2 – Building Cloud Platforms

Welcome to part 2 of my KubeConversations. I spent two days in the Windy City attending KubeCon Cloud Native Con Chicago. I had the opportunity to speak to a wide array of vendors and open source maintainers about what’s going on in the cloud native ecosystem. From those conversations, I picked up on some major... Read more »

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D2C221: KubeConversations Part 2 – Building Cloud Platforms

Ned Bellavance continues his KubeCon conversations with Akamai about cloud-native design and its impact on cloud architecture, Acorn Labs about building a cloud platform, F5 about the networking side of platform engineering, and the startup Chkk about platform engineering and managing Kubernetes.

The post D2C221: KubeConversations Part 2 – Building Cloud Platforms appeared first on Packet Pushers.

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Why Do We Need BGP Identifiers?

A friend of mine sent me an interesting question along these lines:

We all know that in OSPF, the router ID is any 32-bit number, not necessarily an IP address of an interface. The only requirement is that it must be unique throughout the OSPF domain. However, I’ve always wondered what the role of BGP router ID is. RFC 4271 says it should be set to an IP address assigned to that BGP speaker, but where do we use it?

Also, he observed somewhat confusing behavior in the wild:

Take two routers and configure the same BGP identifier on both. Cisco IOS will not establish a session, while IOS XR and Junos will.

I decided to take the challenge and dug deep into the bowels of RFC 4271 and RFC 6286. Here’s what I brought back from that rabbit hole:

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Why Do We Need BGP Identifiers?

A friend of mine sent me an interesting question along these lines:

We all know that in OSPF, the router ID is any 32-bit number, not necessarily an IP address of an interface. The only requirement is that it must be unique throughout the OSPF domain. However, I’ve always wondered what the role of BGP router ID is. RFC 4271 says it should be set to an IP address assigned to that BGP speaker, but where do we use it?

Also, he observed somewhat confusing behavior in the wild:

Take two routers and configure the same BGP identifier on both. Cisco IOS will not establish a session, while IOS XR and Junos will.

I decided to take the challenge and dug deep into the bowels of RFC 4271 and RFC 6286. Here’s what I brought back from that rabbit hole:

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Call the Routing Police!

There is a continual strewam of routing anomalies that are seen in today's Internet. Some are the result of operational mishaps, some are malicious and deliberate, but all of them have some impact. The latest routing mishap in Australia affected some 10 million customers when all their services, including telephony, IP, mobiles and fixed services all stopped. How can we enforce a set of requirements for service operators to do a better job? Where's the Routing Police to chase down these incidents and find out where poor operational practices are compromising the stability of the public Internet?

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Is Your Infrastructure Ready? What You Need to Know Ahead of an AI Investment

Modernizing the enterprise architecture is a critical path on the journey to becoming a digital, AI, and data-driven business.